Friday, May 18, 2007

In the New York Sun, He says that "trying to stop the flow of illegal guns is a noble cause" - but he'd still rather defend corrupt gun dealers:

"Trying to stop the flow of illegal guns is a noble cause and he ought to be doing it," Mr. Johnson said. "The issue here is that he's using private investigators to cross state lines and then lying on application forms to get guns. That doesn't prove the gun dealer did anything wrong. They followed the federal gun law."

New York says the shops each sold a gun to a team of undercover investigators who wore hidden cameras during a sting. Teams of two investigators entered the stores and tried to make so-called ‘straw purchases.’

In such transactions, one investigator asked all the questions about the gun, and then the other, who had not been involved in the process, came forward to fill out forms for the mandatory federal background check.

Federal law prohibits licensed dealers from selling guns to persons if they reasonably believe the gun is not being sold to the person who purports to be the buyer.

Again, the New York Sun:

The stores targeted in Georgia have many times the number of crime gun traces than the average gun store, Mr. Feinblatt said, adding that seven of the eight stores had been identified in prior federal prosecutions of crimes.

"We didn't uncover a secret," he said. "What we did was act when nobody else was willing to."

Clearly, if Eric Johnson has his way, not only will Georgia continue to do nothing to stop corrupt gun dealers, Georgia will actively prevent anyone else from stopping them, too.